The wife of former Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone is believed to have purchased a £35 million ocean-view mansion in Portugal in what has been described as the largest private home sale in the country’s history.
Fabiana Flosi, 46 years her 95-year-old husband’s junior, is reported to have completed the purchase of the property in Quinta da Marinha, a prestigious resort area in Cascais approximately 15 miles west of Lisbon, according to respected Portuguese daily Correio da Manha. The deal is said to have been finalised around three months ago following negotiations spanning six months. The previous owner was Portuguese entrepreneur Marco Galinha, founder of business group Grupo BEL.
The property boasts a sweeping view of the Atlantic Ocean, a large swimming pool, a tennis court and an internal lift. The couple would find themselves in distinguished company in Quinta da Marinha — Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo owns a £30 million mansion in the same development, which sits within the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park. Ecclestone was reportedly spotted in Cascais yesterday with two of his daughters at a local fish restaurant, O Furnas do Guincho.
The acquisition is the latest in a series of major financial moves by the Ecclestone family. Last October, Ecclestone sold his superyacht Petara — named after daughters Petra and Tamara from his second marriage — which had been valued at £17 million and cost an estimated £1.7 million a year to run. “We only used it eight days in a year. We don’t need such a big yacht for that,” Fabiana told German newspaper Bild. Earlier in the same year, Ecclestone sold his collection of 69 supercars to Red Bull co-owner Mark Mateschitz in a deal estimated to be worth £500 million, describing the vehicles as embodying “70 years of F1 history.”
The Cascais purchase comes after a difficult period for Ecclestone legally. In 2023, he admitted before a London court to misleading HMRC about overseas assets and paid £750 million in back taxes, receiving a 17-month suspended sentence after acknowledging he had hidden £416 million from tax authorities. The court heard he had concealed trust structures in Singapore, though his lawyer argued he had never intended to evade tax and was unaware of the true position of his affairs.
Despite those legal troubles, Ecclestone’s personal wealth is estimated at around £2.4 billion — a fortune built from transforming Formula One from a niche motorsport into a global commercial juggernaut. He entered the sport in 1972 by purchasing the Brabham team for £100,000, later securing F1’s worldwide television rights and eventually selling the sport to Liberty Media for £6.4 billion.
Fabiana, whom Ecclestone met in 2009 at the World Motor Sport Council in Brazil where she was working in marketing for the Brazilian Grand Prix, married him in August 2012 at his chalet in the Swiss resort of Gstaad. Their son Ace, now five, was born in July 2020 when Ecclestone was 89. Speaking to Bild, Ecclestone described the boy as “wonderful, bright, curious and interested in everything,” while Fabiana discussed the challenge of parenting with such a significant age gap, including a strict approach to screen time that limits tablets and YouTube to Tuesdays only.
